Do you work in the PR industry? No? Do you have your own startup? At some point you are going to have to face the facts and reach out to bloggers if you want to get some press. So how do you get a positive response after reaching out to a blogger? While it is not guaranteed that you will get positive feedback, there are a few steps that you can take to ensure that you get better feedback from the blogger that you interact with. Here are a few key steps:

1. Write your own blog - Bottom line: bloggers stick together. If a blogger knows that you experience the same challenges that they do, they are much more likely to sympathize with you. If you want to have increased odds of receiving positive feedback, share your blog with them. This is the number one way of reaching out to bloggers. For bonus points, link to the blog of the blogger you are targeting.
2. Read the blog of the person you are reaching out to - This is a no brainer. If you really want to communicate effectively with a blogger, you should read their blog and be able to provide feedback. Comments on their blog are an effective method for this. I have had authors reach out to me after I post about their book all because I linked to their personal blog. The key is to truly understand the person you are communicating with.
3. Make personal connections with other bloggers - The number one way of building a connection is through referrals. So get out there in the real world and start making real connections. The best way to go about this is pick an industry and target the second to most popular bloggers in that industry. The most popular bloggers are typically hard to get in touch with, but the bloggers just under them love the attention. Your job is to reach out to these individuals and become good friends with them. This requires sincere interest in these individuals but you will benefit greatly from these relationships.
4. Be honest and genuinely interested - With anybody that you are reaching out to, they can cut through the b.s. The goal is to build a lasting relationship with people. So reach out to them and sympathize with their problems and find ways that you can help them. Helping people is the best way to build contacts. While I wish I could give you the quick and easy route to successful social media PR, there is no quick and easy route. The only true route is through building genuine bonds.
5. Have something to offer - Do you have a tip on a hot story? Maybe you have an article that would fit perfectly in that person’s blog. Whatever it is, you need to provide some sort of value to the person you are reaching out to. So find out what their interests are (this is pretty easy given that their interests are publicly available on their blog) and satisfy their needs. Randomly picking people out of the pack is practically useless. Do research on each blogger you are targeting and provide them with something that will help make their life easier that day.

Follow these steps and you are on the road to success. The art of public relations is building valuable relationships. Truly connect with your fellow bloggers and you will reap the rewards. Conversely, randomly targeting bloggers because they fit within a given niche will be practically useless unless you can relate to them. So start blogging and reading other bloggers’ blogs and you are on the right course. True social media PR is a challenging task, but if you stay determined and focused you can make a huge impact.

I’ve been browsing around the web searching for insightful research on social media and it’s relationship to public relations. The results have been lacking. While browsing and reading I have been thinking more about what strategies have been successful for other companies. I came up with one company which has succeeded by keeping all of their advertising to the web, and much of their PR focus on social media: Google. Google spends a large amount of time monitoring the blogosphere to get user’s input on what they like and dislike. Additionally, all their press releases are simply published on their website.

While reflecting more on Google’s strategy, I began to wonder if it would be possible for other companies to adopt such a radical strategy to their PR and advertising. I determined that it is possible, but it also requires adopting other policies not related to the marketing and pr departments. The majority of Google employees are ambassadors of their company, speaking positively about their experiences within the organization. Additionally, within each department, employees are encouraged to blog about newly released products. As a result, there is less of a need for targeting mainstream media since Google has made anything they do a news worthy story. Is it possible for companies to embrace social media so much that all of their PR is done through it?

I believe so but there are a few requirements for companies that can adopt such a radical strategy.

1. Must be a “Good Company” - The company must have high ethical and moral standards that it abides by. Additionally, they must go beyond the call of duty to provide employees with a safe and comfortable work environment, and ultimately spoil the employees. If your employees are going to be one of the primary sources of public relations and marketing then you better treat them like kings and queens. If the company has poor health insurance policy or pays employees poorly then a radical strategy to PR will not work.
2. The company must be a large corporation - Adopting a radical strategy to PR will not work if nobody has heard of your company. Your company must be so large that anything it does is news worthy. An example company would be Microsoft or Yahoo.
3. Employees must be tech saavy - If your employees are going to be blogging, they better know what blogging is. Good luck succeeding with a radical PR strategy if your employees aren’t part of the plan. The radical strategy requires a large portion of the company to begin blogging and monitoring social media.

I guess in writing these requirements I have narrowed down the range of possible participants significantly. I can come up with only a few companies that could adopt this strategy: Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft. Can you think of any others?

This morning I received an email notifying me of the next Social Media Club event happening in Washington, DC. The topic being discussed is social media measurement. This topic is of great interest to me currently as it is part of my job. Over the past few days I have been spending a lot of time reading about PR measurement. I plan on continuing my research in PR measurement and as a result I have added it as a category to my blog. I will still continue to cover web 2.0 topics as well but am adding a little PR into the mix. In this entry I will discuss what PR measurement and social media measurement are and why they are important. I will also briefly touch on the problems that PR measurement professionals face.

What is PR Measurement?
Simply put, PR measurement is a method of measuring the impact of all of an organization’s public relations activities which includes but is not limited to public affairs, media relations, and social media activities.

What is Social Media Measurement?
Social media measurement is simply a subset of PR measurement. The goal of social media measurement is to monitor and measure the buzz surrounding any particular topic (most often a brand or specific product) within all forms of social media (blogs, forums, wikis, etc).

Recently I have been trying to come up with an effective system for monitoring social media sources that would enable a company representative to become active in conversations that they deem important. There are many companies that currently offer similar services such as Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics, Cymfony, and Motive Quest. All of these services enable companies to learn more about their customers. As I read more about these services, I also become increasingly skeptical of the actual value provided to the companies. Ultimately the real value is in being able to see what customers really think about your product or brand. In contrast to the past where you would fill out a survey or call a hotline to most likely voice a complaint, consumers are now voluntarily voicing both praise and criticism of their favorite brands and products online. Additionally, companies now have the ability to join the conversation and talk directly with the consumers. While PR measurement attempts to quantitatively describe the effects of all of a company’s PR activities, social media measurement sticks to those activities that are online. As a result of having digital records of people’s opinions, social media measurement generates better statistics than general PR measurement which doesn’t have direct access to the media viewers.

While this entry is simply my general assessment of the PR measurement industry, I would like to make one assertion. Effective social media measurement is attainable via effective filtering processes. Companies are currently experiencing an explosion in access to customer insight. As a result, they are attempting to monitor all the buzz taking place and appropriately respond to as many comments as possible. Ultimately, the process has begun to burn out both executives and the PR professionals who monitor social media. What needs to be developed is a system that allows companies to monitor the buzz while optimizing their time spent on the social media conversations. For large corporations, there is not enough resources to respond to every single customer’s concern that is voiced online, but there is an optimal balance between monitoring, conversation participation, and company action. Where that optimal point is differs for each company.

After working at Fleishman Hillard for the past couple months, I have witnessed a growing demand for full-spectrum interactive services. These services include print, web development & design, online advertising campaigns, and continuous market analysis. While I can’t discuss specifics, many (if not all) of the projects that I’ve been involved with are similar to those at a previous interactive agency that I worked at. While sitting at my desk, I began to wonder how my job would be different if I was working at a “Marketing Agency” rather than a “PR Firm”. My conclusion? There would be no difference aside from working with different people (and the people that I work with at Fleishman Hillard are phenomenal people). While this is mostly due to the line of work that I am in (web development), I also believe that both marketers and PR experts will begin to share many of the same roles.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a clear separation between PR and marketing. PR experts tend to play defensive: “How do we stop this bad news from spreading?” Marketers tend to be on the offensive: “How do I increase my client’s ROI?” Although there is a separation between the two industries, many activities are beginning to overlap, and the intersection lies in the internet. Jonah Bloom of Adage puts it well. He says that there is a cultural gulf

but as the internet makes the relationship between corporate reputation and brand equity ever more transparent, the two departments will have to use their new found common language to bridge it.

So how do we handle this transparency? Easy, by joining the conversation as all the bloggers already do. Activities such as blogging or joining online communities and forums all contribute to the conversation. As the consumer shifts their attention toward the web, both PR firms and marketing agencies will be forced to create an online presence and join the conversation (as they have already begun to do). The winner online, is usually the person with the louder voice. Now, both Marketers and PR experts face a similar challenge. The challenge is no longer just creating the message (and pushing it out there via traditional media), but rather how to make their client’s voice heard in a larger, interconnected world.

There is a new Digg alternative that monitors the social impact of company actions. Once an article is submitted to the site, users can vote on the social impact of the actions described in the article. This is a great way for monitoring a company’s social behavior. The only feature that seemed to be missing from the site was an overall net impact for each company. You can view articles related to each company but there is no running tally of the net social impact. While such a barometer would perhaps be misleading, it would be a fun addition to the site.

This site is also a great resource for those in the PR/Communications industry for monitoring a client’s online reputation. If this site becomes popular, it could become the primary place for consumers to go check out how good or bad their favorite brands really are. While this site could very well become a popular alternative to Digg, I’m not as sure that this will be the best way to monitor an company’s online reputation as a whole. Why? Well just like Digg, I’m sure this site will develop a loyal fan base. Overtime each of the article ratings will simply be an accurate reflection of what this one community believes the social impact of any given story to be, not what society as a whole perceives the impact to be.